@hogposting
@hexbear.netI was power washing the lube out of the back of my squad car when I heard sarge shout at me.
"JOHNSON!" she barked. I turned to her. She was in my face, towering over me. "Quit dicking around down there! Some jackoffs over at chapo dot chat are being horny on !main@hexbear.net. Get in there and nail their asses!" I hopped in my car, grabbed the stick, and rammed it into gear.
The air on the scene was hot and thick. Someone had been shooting ropes like it was a Just Cause 3 speedrun. I could hear the perps -- must've been six or seven of 'em -- as I crept behind the house. I fingered my gun, took a deep breath, and plunged right in.
"VOCEL POLICE! SPREAD 'EM!" I yelled as I busted down the back door. "GET YOUR GENITALS WHERE I CAN SEE 'EM!" Surprisingly, everyone eagerly complied. "Anyone tries anything smart and I'll finish you off myself!" I didn't have enough cuffs for all of them; luckily, there were more on the scene. My forearms were burning by the time I wrapped up all the body cavity searches.
I had finally stuffed all of them into the meat wagon when my radio crackled. "JOHNSON!" It was sarge again. "Get back to the station! We got a suspect linked to the distribution of Sears catalogs and I need you to bust some balls! Squeeze 'em, and squeeze 'em hard!"
I went downtown without hesitation. My feet were still sticky from the crime scene, but there was no time to de-cum. For months now I had been this close to the Sears Outfit. They were teasing me, I knew it. This sicko had a load of information, and I was going to beat it out of him no matter how long it took. If he wanted to play rough, well, I'd give him all he could handle and more.
In the interrogation room the suspect greeted me with a playful smile. Without a word I slapped on the blacklights -- his pants lit up like a Christmas tree. I put on a protective blindfold sheer enough to where I could still make out his features. Hovering just inches from him, I asked, "Do you have any idea what we do with guys like you? You're going down, and it's gonna be messy. I'll have you jammed up so hard there's not a chance you'll get off."
Still smiling, he looked me right in the eyes. "I'm afraid you're too late, officer. I just did."
One thing everyone on here should agree on is if we want to get anything done, we need more people on our side. That's true regardless of what you want to do or who you consider to be on our side.
This post is an effort to start a more focused discussion about who is already on our side and how to bring more people in. The obvious danger is watering down leftist movements with unprincipled libs, but that's why a pipeline strategy is so important. It's not inviting a bunch of libs into the lefty clubhouse as-is; it's giving libs (and other groups) the tools to keep taking that next step in the right direction. It's not "everyone needs to 100% agree with me or I refuse to work with them in any capacity;" it's getting people started down the right path and then making it easy for them to keep going.
You will sometimes hear takes in the form of "this person who describes themselves as a socialist, who does praxis of some kind, and who is more critical of capital than 95% of the U.S. population is actually a :LIB: -- I'm the One True Leftist and no one is as leftist as me." This type of take is counterproductive in the extreme. As the chuds in Michigan just showed, you're not starting a protracted people's war with a dozen of your buddies (and you're certainly not accomplishing any non-violent political action without broad public support). We need to grow our movement, and starting from the premise that the vast majority of the country (even extending to the vast majority of self-described leftists) is so liberal they should be treated with contempt is a failing strategy.
So who is "we"? Who should we consider to be "on the left"? I suggest the following definition:
If you are willing to seriously criticize capitalism, even some imaginary "pefected" capitalism, you are on the left. This means you should be treated with good faith and critically supported.
There is a real difference between those who will seriously criticize capitalism and those who will cheer it on despite dangling left-ish promises to get support. Note that excuses for capitalism ("that's just crony capitalism") or minor quibbles with capitalism ("yeah, landlords shouldn't be able to abuse tenants, but fundamentally there's nothing wrong with owning tons of property and renting it out") are not "serious" criticisms. That split between those who will seriously criticize capitalism and those who won't is where we should draw the line between who is broadly on our side and who isn't. The people on the left of that split have at least some theoretical understanding of the failings of capitalism and are at least willing to contemplate alternatives that go beyond "but what if we just did nicer capitalism?" We can and should criticize those people where appropriate, but we should (1) assume they are acting in good faith until there's concrete evidence to the contrary, and (2) support them (again, critically) because even if they aren't our preferred flavor of leftism, their success will help grow the left as a whole. To do anything less is a fast track to "I'm going to start a protracted people's war with a dozen of my True Leftist friends because I've alienated everyone else on the left" territory.
The short answer: The left should appeal to everyone, because no one knows how to build socialism in the imperial core and we don't know with certainty who all might take the first steps towards leftism.
The long answer:
Attempting to develop precise definitions of every meaningful "group" in the country rapidly gets extremely complicated, to the point where its usefulness can easily decline. For our purposes, it's enough to talk about three groups of non-leftists that we should be appealing to:
"But what about the groups Lenin, etc. identified?" History is often informative, but we have to walk the line between not repeating old mistakes and an un-scientific view of history as a set of near-prophetic laws that will never ever change no matter what context they're applied to. There is nothing more alienating to potential leftists than making a good-faith effort to move left and being met with "oh you're a Social Democrat (for example) so you're really a Social Fascist." Serious leftist aren't dogmatic; they're practical and recognize the need to bring people in.